For nearly 20 years, Lynn Lein of Yuppie Hill Poultry (W1384 Potter Road, Burlington, Wis.) has started most of her days visiting the barns where her flock of chickens—or “the girls” as they’re affectionately referred to—fly down in a flurry of feathers and excited clucking. “They’re very social animals,” Lein said. “Before you even get into the barn, they all start to come down and greet you.”
Lein said she’s always loved animals and made the transition from a hospital lab technician for Aurora to farming when she moved from Milwaukee to Burlington. Her sons, Matt and Jay, brought home a couple of chickens, and they made a nice little house for them. Lein’s neighbors remarked that the fowl had such a fine coop that they were “yuppie chickens.” “I never thought it would turn into a viable business,” Lein said. She began selling her girls’ eggs at the South Shore Farmers Market. Beans & Barley was her first store and restaurant account, and the partnership still continues.
Massive recalls of eggs and movies such as Food, Inc. have made most people aware today of the crowded and unhealthy conditions in which mammoth agricultural industries raise their chickens. But when Yuppie Hill Poultry first started, Lein said it took a lot of education about humane and healthy farming practices and why eggs from smaller farms are ultimately the better value for people, animals and the planet—even though they cost more than standard grocery store eggs. “When we first started, it wasn’t popular that people were trying to source local food like they do today,” she said.
Girls Rule (the Roost)
The girls of Yuppie Hill Poultry still live in those swanky conditions that prompted Lein’s neighbors to coin them yuppies (young urban poultry?). Lein’s flock of approximately 30,000 Hy-Line Brown chickens are kept indoors so they are not exposed to extreme weather, disease or predators, but their conditions in the three barns are spacious and comfortable.
“We try to bring the outside inside,” Lein said. “We try to make the interior of the barn environmentally friendly so it seems like they’re outside. The barns are temperature controlled, they have the whole barn to scratch in and dig, there are perches everywhere so they can fly around, and there’s room to flap their wings. They do everything that they would do outside, but they’re protected.”
The girls get a quality vegetarian feed with no animal byproducts. Lein believes humane treatment of our farm animals is the right thing to do—for their well-being and for business. “If we don’t keep our animals safe and healthy, they’re not going to produce,” she affirmed. The eggs are collected fresh and prepared for prompt delivery. Lein noted Yuppie Hill Poultry’s eggs have never been recalled.
Yuppie Hill Poultry also has broiler meat chickens and turkeys. Their farm café, the Hen House, is open for farm dinners the second Saturday of each month from September through May (they take June, July and August off). Lein is at the Greendale Downtown Market that runs from June through October, and the eggs are available at Beans & Barley, Outpost Natural Foods, the Riverwest Co-op, Groppi’s Market and Metcalfe’s Sentry. Lein also has several restaurant accounts.
Lein is glad she went into farming, and Matt and Jay, now in their 30s, help her on the farm. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I almost wish I would have done it earlier,” she said.
For more information, call 262-210-0264, email yuppiehillfarm@hotmail.com, or visit yuppiehillpoultry.com.
